Welcome to my blog!

We find ourselves in challenging times. To meet them more easily, I believe involves challenging ourselves to move beyond old, established habits and patterns.

Perhaps I am a bit late fully entering into the 21st century by starting my blog now, in 2010! In that my work and message has so much to do with slowing down and settling into a deeper knowing beyond and prior to our cultural modes, it may be appropriate to step extra slowly into the world of blogging and other cyber realities.

I suspect that, if you are drawn to my blog and the words here, you may also value this slower, deeper state we are all capable of. I invite you to read on and regularly, and hope the words below can support you in enhancing your ability to be, even in the midst of all the doing required in our modern world.

Sunday, 5 January 2014

The Power of Our Stories

Supporting a student recently, I was
reminded of just how widespread trauma is amongst us, of how powerful its grip
on us can be, and how empowering it can be to simply acknowledge it.

How many of us have not been through overwhelming
accidents, embarrassments, abuses, or other assaults in our lives? Most of us
have not had the so-called ideal childhood where every moment was wondrous and
every interaction rewarding. Most of us were not adequately seen, held,
respected, met and reflected as little ones. Research on PTSD (Post traumatic
stress disorder) has found that those exposed to challenging situations, like
war, for example, are more likely to emerge with ongoing symptoms of stress
intolerance if they had a traumatic experience when younger. Our histories, our
stories inform us throughout our lives as to who we are, where we belong (or
don’t) and what our purpose may be. We define ourselves according to our
experience, particularly our very early experience.

The student I talked with had been
depressed, having lost interest in the work she had previously been so
enthusiastic about. A shocking accident had left her in pain, unable to walk
for months, and unable to perform tasks she had previously excelled at. As I
listened to her, my heart opened. I felt the angst of her struggle and
recognized it. As support, I shared with her a piece of my own history.

My Concussive
Story

In 1979, I had a concussion. I was engaged
in my favorite hobby – folk dancing. Supposedly a relatively safe activity, I
had been dancing Scandinavian turning dances at a weekend workshop out in the
country. There were too many dancers on the floor. Someone’s foot accidently
became entwined with mine or my partner’s. With all the momentum of the spin, we
fell. Had I been on my own, I suspect I would have stretched out my arm and
landed on it, probably breaking it. Instead, I went straight back on the back
of my head onto the concrete, with the weight of my partner on top of me.

The room went quiet. I now know that the
stillness was a combination of both the shock in the room and the shock in my
nervous system. There was a doctor at the workshop who came over and starting
assessing my state. What is your name,
she asked. Can you tell me your name?
I knew why she was asking. I had been working as an Occupational Therapist on a
Neurology unit. I had patients with recent head injuries who couldn’t remember
their names. But I knew my name. Saying it was another matter.

I have no idea how long I lay there in
shock, paralyzed, unable to make my mouth or tongue move to say my name. I only
knew it took everything I had to make it happen. It reminds me of when a petite
mother witnesses her child under the wheels of a car and somehow lifts the car
to free the child.In my case, however,
the muscles simply wouldn’t respond. The nerves could not convey their
messages. Eventually, after what may have been a minute or an hour, my name
came out of my mouth. Relieved, I began to laugh. The whole room joined in.
They knew I was fine now and life, or at least dance, could resume.

Beginning
A Long Journey

Life was not back to normal, however. I was
helped to walk over to a mat at the side of the room to lie down while the
others went back to their dance. I felt more lightheaded than I ever had
before. As I lay on my mat, I slowly turned my head and there, to my surprise,
I saw a newborn baby on the mat next to mine! Someone had brought the baby and
left him to sleep while she danced. For me, however, this sight was miraculous.
I didn’t know it then, but I, too, was starting a new life. At the moment,
innocent like the babe next to me, I knew only what I saw.

For a few days, as my friends checked in
with me through the night to make sure I was still conscious and alive, I felt
a lightness of being. I felt ecstatic with all life being fresh and new. I wasn’t
too bothered when, returning to teach folk dancing, I found I couldn’t balance
on one foot to demonstrate a dance step. I simply asked a friend to come and
hold my hand as I demonstrated.

Over time, however, the headaches and
dizziness began to get to me. I began to worry about my memory. When I returned
to work at the hospital, I was horrified to discover myself forgetting
important things. One evening after work, I realized I had left a confused old
lady on the toilet, having forgotten to go back to retrieve her and help her
back to her wheel chair before going home. I feared I would lose my job if I
told anyone. I didn’t know what to do. I was immensely relieved to see her
happily in her chair the next day. I longed to have my own life fall back into
place so easily. I began to feel depressed.

My hopeless feelings were enhanced by my
inability at times to find the words I needed. Prior to the concussion, I had
loved word games. My folk dance friends and I would spend hours when we weren’t
dancing immersed in games of Scrabble and Boggle. I excelled at these games,
easily coming up with obscure words that brought me more points than anyone
else. Now, nothing came. I struggled at times to remember words even when
speaking. A visit to a neurologist added to the growing gloom. Reviewing a brain
scan, he told me what he saw in my brain would not come from a traumatic injury
like my concussion. It signified a more deteriorative disease like MS (Multiple
sclerosis).

This shocking news landed on top of the
concussion shock, still lingering from a year earlier. Having worked with
patients with MS, I had often thought this debilitating disease with no cure was
the last diagnosis I would ever want. The neurologist wanted me to do a spinal
tap to complete the diagnosis, but something in me rebelled. I had the
uncharacteristic thought to not go through with the spinal tap and just think
of myself as healthy. I never returned to the neurologist.

Guided
into a New Life

I now believe something was protecting me,
guiding me. Over the next few years, my life began to turn around. I found
myself drawn to alternative therapies, leading me into my body and through my
earlier trauma history. As I faced my traumas, they began to resolve, loosening
their hold on me. The depression lifted. My life force strengthened. Eventually,
led to Craniosacral Therapy, the remaining symptoms from the concussion began
to diminish.

Today, I look back to that folk dance
accident with immense gratitude. I don’t think I would be able to do the subtle
therapies I do now had I not been knocked out of my old ways. Up until that
time, I had essentially lived from the neck up. My body was just something I
had to take care of so it wouldn’t bother me. After the concussion, I could no
longer be as heady, intellectual or articulate as I had been before. It was a
huge loss for me. Depression was a natural response.

Talking to the student, I described my story
briefly, acknowledging how common it is to feel depressed after a life changing
injury. I also explained that chronic pain after an injury can affect nerves up
into the brain, repeatedly setting off a stress response. The person begins to
feel chronically overwhelmed. Their resources are taken up with dealing with
the pain. Their cortisol levels are high. They have nothing to fall back on
when stress arises in their life. They feel exhausted, drained, losing interest
in anything that takes energy.

The student was glowing more and more with
each word I spoke. She felt heard and touched by hearing my story and knowing
that others have similar experiences to hers. The next day, she thanked me
profusely, telling me how helpful it was just to normalize her situation.

Our interaction inspired me to write this,
wishing I could as deeply touch and reassure the many others with similar
experiences.

Our
Stories as Support

We are all unique. Our experiences are all
different. But they are also the same. We all have the potential for compassion
based on our own suffering. We actually understand much of how it is to be
someone else, even though we can’t possibly understand how it is to be that
person! We all share this human journey. Perhaps, the most important service
our stories provide is the potential for that understanding. While it can be devastating
to identify with our stories, believing they define us, there is profound
healing and connectedness available when we witness ourselves in relation to
those stories. Knowing we are more than what we have done or seen or
experienced, and yet that we have been affected. Our stories are powerful and
we can be powerful with them.

As Rumi wrote: "The
wound is the place where the Light enters you." When we become our
stories, we often cannot perceive or receive the gifts they have to offer us.
It is when we step back and allow ourselves to hold our stories within the
larger wholeness of our being that we begin to understand. Perhaps then, we
even have the potential to embody and pass on the message delivered to us via
our experience. The Light is then posted for all to see and share.